Waypoint Bio, a pioneering biotechnology company specializing in solid tumor cell therapies, has announced a significant milestone in its journey with the acquisition of $14.5 million in seed funding. The funding round was led by Hummingbird Ventures, with participation from Recode Ventures and pre-seed lead Fifty Years.
This financial boost is aimed at accelerating the development of Waypoint Bio’s proprietary in vivo spatial pooled screening technology, which targets the creation of innovative treatments for challenging cancers like pancreatic cancer.
Founded by MIT alumni Dr. Xinchen Wang and Dr. David Phizicky, Waypoint Bio aims to harness AI, automation, and spatial biology to pioneer a next-generation drug discovery platform.
Waypoint Bio’s groundbreaking platform integrates spatial biology with pooled screening, enabling initial assessments of cell therapy designs in vivo while analyzing hundreds of phenotypes at the single-cell level. This approach facilitates a deeper understanding of effective designs and their underlying mechanisms, streamlining the development of therapies for historically hard-to-treat diseases.
Dr. Xinchen Wang, Co-founder and CEO of Waypoint Bio, underscored the transformative potential of their technology, highlighting its ability to enhance traditional pooled screening by leveraging spatial biology. This enhancement allows for the rapid generation of novel drug candidates with a higher likelihood of clinical success in complex diseases.
Dr. David Phizicky, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, elaborated on their platform’s capability to initiate discovery directly in mouse models, bypassing traditional in vitro steps. This approach enables high-throughput testing of cell therapy designs at reduced costs, significantly increasing the scalability and translatability of their innovations.
The seed financing will initially support the development of CAR T-cell therapies designed to combat the tumor microenvironment, followed by the advancement of Treg therapies for autoimmune conditions. Pablo Lubroth from Hummingbird Ventures expressed confidence in Waypoint Bio’s potential to revolutionize solid tumor cell therapy through spatial biology at a scalable level.